Italian kids in Maltese schools facing integration problems

Malta’s Italian community is officially the largest cohort of foreign learners in the islands’ schools, with their number increasing by 16% between 2017 and 2019.

Malta had 1,109 Italians attending school in 2019, of which 721 were in kindergarten or primary schools.

Their presence reflects the growing Italian population in Malta over the last decade, attracted to the islands by growing job opportunities.

But the inclusion of Italian children in the Maltese school system has been conditioned by difficulties in effectively communicating in Maltese and English, which has a negative impact on their active participation in class, even during lessons of Italian itself.

Code-switching and mixing between Maltese and English, both in teacher-talk and during interactions between students, has presented additional challenges for Italian students.

A study by educators Sandro Caruana and Mario Pace published in the Malta Review of Educational Research sourced data from 27 teachers of Italian and education officers, and interviews included in a recent dissertation on the experience of Italian students in Maltese schools by T. Palazzo.

“Although their experience in Maltese schools is generally positive, there are instances where adapting to a new educational system is the cause of demotivation, which leads to absenteeism, as well as other cases where they are victims of bullying,” the authors said.

Their integration is crucial considering that since most of them are very young, “one can assume that quite a number of them will remain in Malta for a large portion of their life.”

Support from cultural mediators, professional figures which are still absent within the Maltese educational system, was urgently required to facilitate the integration of a growing number of Italian students, the academics said.

Currently this task is being undertaken by teachers and LSEs who speak Italian and sometimes intervene to help Italian learners feel more welcome, especially during the initial stages of their schooling in Malta. This is considered especially important since the local educational system differs considerably from the Italian one

While Italians feel included ‘most of the time’, a lack of knowledge of Maltese and to lesser extent English still constitutes a barrier.

“They feel included most of the time. However, at times, students speak in Maltese amongst each other and the Italian students do not understand so they cannot fully interact with them,” a teacher of Italian reported.

Although most Italian students are placed in mainstream classes, some of them are referred by schools to receive ‘induction’ support. This normally occurs when learners, irrespective of their age, have limited competence in both English and Maltese and are therefore placed in an ‘induction hub’, sometimes prior to mainstreaming.

While these induction hubs provide a space for migrant learners to improve their competence of English and Maltese, “adequate in-class support should also be provided and sustained”.

One of the risks posed by a lack of inclusion is the emergence of in-class and out-of-class ‘clusters’ of students of foreign nationalities, who do not mix readily with the Maltese. “Unfortunately, they do not tend to mix with Maltese students. They tend to stay in groups with other foreigners or Italian counterparts,” a secondary school teacher interviewed in the study said.

The study recommends a greater emphasis on linguistic similarities between Maltese and Italian. One way of addressing this problem is by asking students to focus on the local linguistic landscape, which is rife with Italianisms. “This would help all students realise that Italian is strongly present locally, while enabling Italian students to appreciate that Malta is ‘so near’ to their homeland, rather than ‘so far’.”

Ironically, while the popularity of Italian TV channels in previous decades had led to a “considerable degree of spontaneous acquisition among locals” in a context with few Italian migrants coming to work here, the latest influx of Italian people in Malta is taking place at a time when knowledge of Italian is less widespread, especially among young people.

Curiously, the study shows that Italian students in Malta are resorting to English nomenclature to refer to school-related topics just like locals do. Examples include instances of code-switching such as: “...  durante il parents’ evening” (during the parent’s evening); “quella di design e technology [l’insegnante] dà sempre... tipo detention. Solo perche magari ti scordi l’apron” (The arts and design teacher always gives detention even if you forget the apron) and other sentences in which they use the words “pitch”, “gym”, “timetable” and “locker”. One student even used the term “soggetto” (subject) to refer to school subjects, although this is incorrect in Italian.